Faience or faïence (/faɪˈɑːns/ or /feɪ-/; French: [fajɑ̃s]) is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a buff earthenware body, at least when there is no more usual English name for the type concerned. The invention of a white potteryglaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result, the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain styles.

English generally uses various other terms for well-known sub-types of faience. Italian tin-glazed earthenware, at least the early forms, is called maiolica in English, Dutch wares are called Delftware, and their English equivalents English delftware, leaving "faience" as the normal term in English for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese wares and those of other countries not mentioned (it is also the usual French term, and fayence in German). The name faience is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, Italy, where a painted majolica ware on a clean, opaque pure-white ground, was produced for export as early as the fifteenth century.

In Italy, locally produced tin-glazed earthenwares, called now called maiolica, initiated in the fourteenth century, reached a peak in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. After about 1600, these lost their appeal to elite customers, and the quality of painting declined, with geometric designs and simple shapes replacing the complicated and sophisticated scenes of the best period. Production continues to the present day in many centres, and the wares are again called "faience" in English (though usually still maiolica in Italian). At some point "faience as a term for pottery from Faenza in northern Italy was a general term used in French, and then reached English.[1]

The first northerners to imitate the tin-glazed earthenwares being imported from Italy were the Dutch. Delftware is a kind of faience, made at potteries round Delft in the Netherlands, characteristically decorated in blue on white. It began in the early sixteenth century on a relatively small scale, imitating Italian maiolica, but from around 1580 it began to imitate the highly sought-after blue and whiteChinese export porcelain that was beginning to reach Europe, soon followed by Japanese export porcelain. From the later half of the century the Dutch were manufacturing and exporting very large quantities, some in its own recognisably Dutch style, as well as copying East Asian porcelain.

There were also imitations of Italian istoriato maiolica, painted with figurative subjects, made in France from around 1590 onwards, especially in Lyon and Nevers.

"English delftware" produced in Lambeth, London, and at other centres, from the late sixteenth century, provided apothecaries with jars for wet and dry drugs, among a wide range of wares. Large painted dishes were produced for weddings and other special occasions, with crude decoration that later appealed to collectors of English folk art. Many of the early potters in London were Flemish.[2] By about 1600, blue-and-white wares were being produced, labelling the contents within decorative borders. The production was slowly superseded in the first half of the eighteenth century with the introduction of cheap creamware.

Dutch potters in northern (and Protestant) Germany established German centres of faience: the first manufactories in Germany were opened at Hanau (1661) and Heusenstamm (1662), soon moved to nearby Frankfurt-am-Main.

By the mid-18th centuries many French factories produced (as well as simpler wares) pieces that followed the Rococo styles of the French porcelain factories and often hired and trained painters with the skill to produce work of a quality that sometimes approached them.

The products of French faience manufactories, rarely marked, are identified by the usual methods of ceramic connoisseurship: the character of the body, the character and palette of the glaze, and the style of decoration, faïence blanche being left in its undecorated fired white slip. Faïence parlante bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners. Wares for apothecaries, including albarello, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the Faïence patriotique that was a specialty of the years of the French Revolution.

By the mid-18th century, glazed earthenware made in Liguria was imitating decors of its Dutch and French rivals

In the course of the later 18th century, cheaper porcelain, and the refined earthenwares first developed in Staffordshire pottery such as creamware took over the market for refined faience. In the early 19th century, fine stoneware—fired so hot that the unglazed body vitrifies—closed the last of the traditional makers' ateliers even for beer steins. At the low end of the market, local manufactories continued to supply regional markets with coarse and simple wares, and many local varieties have continued to be made in versions of the old styles as a form of folk art, and today for tourists.

Creamware and other types of refined earthenware Staffordshire pottery developed in the 18th century were hugely successful and exported to Europe and the Americas. These are not called "faience" in English, but may be in other languages, eg creamware was known as faience fine in France.

Delftware

Delftware or Delft pottery, also known as Delft Blue, is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed earthenware, a form of faience. Most of it is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands was the major centre of production, but the term covers wares with other colours, and made elsewhere. It is also used for similar pottery that it influenced made in England, but this should be called English delftware to avoid confusion.

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating materials, generally including kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C. The toughness, strength, and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainly from vitrification and the formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. Though definitions vary, porcelain can be divided into three main categories: hard-paste, soft-paste and bone china. The category that an object belongs to depends on the composition of the paste used to make the body of the porcelain object and the firing conditions.

Earthenware

Earthenware is glazed or unglazed nonvitreous pottery that has normally been fired below 1200°C. Porcelain, bone china and stoneware, all fired at high enough temperatures to vitrify, are the main other important types of pottery.

English delftware

English delftware is tin-glazed pottery made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin. English tin-glazed pottery was called "galleyware" and its makers "gallypotters" until the early 18th century; it was given the name delftware after the tin-glazed pottery from the Netherlands, which it often copied, but "delftware" is not usually capitalized.

Creamware

Creamware is a cream-coloured, refined earthenware with a lead glaze over a pale body, known in France as faïence fine, in Germany as Engels porselein and Italy as terraglia inglese. It was created about 1750 by the potters of Staffordshire, England, who refined the materials and techniques of salt-glazed earthenware towards a finer, thinner, whiter body with a brilliant glassy lead glaze, which proved so ideal for domestic ware that it supplanted white salt-glaze wares by about 1780. It was popular until the 1840s.

Majolica

Majolica is a word for painted pottery, whose use is not always precise, and can be confusing. Note the different spellings, often confused, which can have different meanings, as follows.

Maiolica: Tin-glazed earthenware having an opaque white ceramic glaze with painted in-glaze decoration of metal oxide enamel colour(s). It is frequently prone to flaking and somewhat delicate, and reached Italy by the mid-15th century. Renaissance Italian maiolica became a celebrated art form, and in contemporary English "maiolica" tends to be restricted to this. Maiolica developed also as faience, and as delftware. In Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, local wares continue to be called 'majolica' or 'maiolica'.

Victorian majolica: Either or both of two different types of 19th-century pottery.

The mass-produced and widely available lead-glazed earthenware of coloured lead glazes manufactured during the second half of the 19th century. Named "Palissy ware" by Minton & Co. this product soon became known also as majolica. The product, made with an extended range of improved coloured lead glazes, is hard-wearing, and typically relief-moulded. Introduced to the public at the 1851 Exhibition, it was later widely copied and mass-produced.

The rare 'English tin-glazed majolica' – tin-glazed pottery made in imitation of the Italian Renaissance maiolica process and style.: English tin-glazed earthenware in imitation of Italian Renaissance maiolica [tin-glazed], having an opaque white glaze with fine painted decoration, also named ‘Majolica’, also introduced at the 1851 Exhibition. This was a luxury product, produced in much smaller quantities than the lead-glazed form.

Blue and white pottery

"Blue and white pottery" covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by stencilling or by transfer-printing, though other methods of application have also been used. The cobalt pigment is one of the very few that can withstand the highest firing temperatures that are required, in particular for porcelain, which partly accounts for its long-lasting popularity. Historically, many other colours required overglaze decoration and then a second firing at a lower temperature to fix that.

Islamic pottery

Medieval Islamic pottery occupied a geographical position between Chinese ceramics, then the unchallenged leaders of Eurasian production, and the pottery of the Byzantine Empire and Europe. For most of the period it can fairly be said to have been between the two in terms of aesthetic achievement and influence as well, borrowing from China and exporting to and influencing Byzantium and Europe. The use of drinking and eating vessels in gold and silver, the ideal in ancient Rome and Persia as well as medieval Christian societies, is prohibited by the Hadiths, with the result that pottery and glass were used for tableware by Muslim elites, as pottery also was in China, but was much rarer in Europe and Byzantium. In the same way Islamic restrictions greatly discouraged figurative wall-painting, encouraging the architectural use of schemes of decorative and often geometrically-patterned tiles, which are the most distinctive and original speciality of Islamic ceramics.

Maiolica

Maiolica, also called Majolica, is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance period. It is decorated in colours on a white background, sometimes depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works known as istoriato wares. By the late 15th century, several places, mainly small cities in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond.

Transfer printing

Transfer printing is a method of decorating pottery or other materials using an engraved copper or steel plate from which a monochrome print on paper is taken which is then transferred by pressing onto the ceramic piece. Pottery decorated using the technique is known as transferware or transfer ware.

Tin-glazing

Tin-glazing is the process of giving ceramic items a tin-based glaze that is white, glossy and opaque, which is normally applied to red or buff earthenware. The opacity and whiteness of tin glaze encourage its frequent decoration with overglaze colour. Majolica, delftware and faience are among the terms used for common types of tin-glazed pottery. An alternative is lead-glazing, where the basic glaze is transparent; some types of pottery use both.

Liverpool porcelain

Liverpool porcelain is mostly of the soft-paste porcelain type and was produced between about 1754 and 1804 in various factories in Liverpool. Tin-glazed English delftware had been produced in Liverpool from at least 1710 at numerous potteries, but some then switched to making porcelain. A portion of the output was exported, mainly to North America and the Caribbean.

Mintons

Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.

Victorian majolica

Victorian majolica is a term sometimes used for other types of glazed pottery, but the name properly refers only to two types of earthenware made in the second half of the 19th century in Europe and America.

Gardiner Museum

The Gardiner Museum is Canada's national ceramics museum. It was founded by George and Helen Gardiner in 1984 to house their collection of ceramic art. It is located on Queen's Park just south of Bloor Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, opposite the Royal Ontario Museum. The nearest subway station is Museum.

Tin-glazed pottery

Tin-glazed pottery is earthenware covered in glaze containing tin oxide which is white, shiny and opaque ; usually this provides a background for brightly painted decoration. It has been important in Islamic and European pottery, but very little used in East Asia. The pottery body is usually made of red or buff-colored earthenware and the white glaze imitated Chinese porcelain. The decoration on tin-glazed pottery is usually applied to the unfired glaze surface by brush with metallic oxides, commonly cobalt oxide, copper oxide, iron oxide, manganese dioxide and antimony oxide. The makers of Italian tin-glazed pottery from the late Renaissance blended oxides to produce detailed and realistic polychrome paintings.

Gzhel

Gzhel is a Russian style of blue and white ceramics which takes its name from the village of Gzhel and surrounding area, where it has been produced since 1802.

Lead-glazed earthenware

Lead-glazed earthenware is one of the traditional types of glazed earthenware, which coat the ceramic body and render it impervious to liquids, as terracotta itself is not. Plain lead glaze is shiny and transparent after firing. Coloured lead glazes are shiny and either translucent or opaque after firing. Three other traditional techniques are tin-glazed earthenware, which coats the ware with an opaque white glaze suited for colored designs, salt-glazed earthenware such as stoneware, and the feldspathic glazes of Asian porcelain. Modern materials technology has invented new vitreous glazes that do not fall into these traditional categories.

Ceramic art

Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take forms including art ware, tile, figurines, sculpture, and tableware. Ceramic art is one of the arts, particularly the visual arts. Of these, it is one of the plastic arts. While some ceramics are considered fine art, as pottery or sculpture, some are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramics may also be considered artefacts in archaeology. Ceramic art can be made by one person or by a group of people. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a group of people design, manufacture and decorate the art ware. Products from a pottery are sometimes referred to as "art pottery". In a one-person pottery studio, ceramists or potters produce studio pottery.